An Experimental Study of Foliage Penetrating Radar with Coherent Change Detection

In this study, we designed and built a prototype foliage penetrating radar (FPR) system for real-time detecting and imaging of moving objects in forestlands. The system was composed of a handheld VNA, two log-periodic antennas, a 1 W RF amplifier, a LNA and a computer. Two different change detection procedures namely complex subtraction and wavelet-based semblance analysis were employed for the detection of electromagnetic impedance changes due to human movement in slightly dense forest camouflage conditions. Both techniques are based on the comparison of the 1D range profiles of the scene acquired at consecutive time instants. The results demonstrate the successful detection and tracking of the change signals occurring at up to 100 m range.